<p> The album <i>Odalisque</i> by the indie rock band Sanglorians is the culmination of many years of deep personal, artistic, and technical work. Many aspects of the composition, arrangement, performance, and recording of the project album were widely influenced by the methodologies espoused within the Master of Music program in Commercial Music Composition and Arranging at California State University, Los Angeles. This project report explores these methodologies of commercial music composition as they were applied to each song during the songwriting, arranging, and production processes. Approached as a scholarly personal narrative manuscript, each song's genesis is sourced, and its meaning examined in proper creative context within the whole.</p>

<p> This thesis explores the application of Augusto Boal&rsquo;s exercises as a basis for an Introduction to Acting class, wherein students are required to move outside of their comfort zones in order to change their perceptions of themselves and of the world around them. I will demonstrate that Boal&rsquo;s <i>Games for Actors and Non-Actors</i> effectively challenges students&rsquo; boundaries in a fun and engaging way, thereby preparing them for the task of performing. Through his techniques, students find it easier to socialize, overcome shyness, and acquire the courage that is required to act.</p><p> Chapter 1 charts my introduction to Boal and the decision to explore his exercises as a basis for a non-major acting course. By describing what I deem necessary and strive to achieve in such a class, I explain the goals that I hope to accomplish each time I teach.</p><p> Chapter 2 outlines Boal&rsquo;s philosophies and his agenda for challenging social injustice. I will focus specifically on his Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theatre using the notion of the &ldquo;Actor and Spect-actor&rdquo;. </p><p> Chapter 3 details my own in-class application of Boal. In each instance of interactions with students, I compare the projected outcome versus the actual results, thereby evaluating the ii exercises&rsquo; success or failure. I discuss my students&rsquo; reactions to the exercises through collected written data.</p><p> Chapter 4 reflects on using Boal&rsquo;s exercises in the future. This includes the changes I would make in the presentation and set-up of the exercises, effective adjustments, and discussing his work as being appropriate for a beginner&rsquo;s class.</p>

<p> The Panorama competition held in Trinidad each year is the global epicenter of steel drum music, showcasing the greatest performers and composers while shaping steel drum world-wide. However, music written for the standard Panorama ensemble of 120 players offers up a challenge for smaller, less experienced ensembles to preserve the spirit and energy of the original composition, especially when the drum set is the only member of the percussion rhythm section. My interest in this endeavor was spirited by the challenge of combining the typical percussion section consisting of congas, maracas, guiros, cowbells irons, and drum set into an individual part while maintaining key elements of the original composition. This paper addresses the concepts and approaches I employed for my recital performance of <i>The Last Word; </i> composed by American steel drum virtuoso, Andy Narell.</p>

This thesis adopts an interdisciplinary approach in order to explore the social and cultural history of black Britain in 1970s fictional film and television. It draws on rigorous archival research, original interview testimony with practitioners and audience members, and close textual analysis of visual sources, in order to examine relations between black film and television texts and the social, political and institutional contexts of their authorship. The key focus of my study is therefore on black creative agency. Whilst prior studies have addressed black expression and representation in film and television, few have attempted to trace the process of creativity itself. My study uniquely traces the black creative voice in an historical period of emergence and conflict, and endeavours to ‘map’ it in terms of networks of (white and black) practitioners, the spaces of industrial production and the metaphorical, geographical and diasporic spaces of community and socio-political action. The thesis is structured in two parts. In Part 2, my ‘mapping’ encompasses a broad landscape – I ‘map the field’ socio-politically and then provide a survey of the significant range of feature films and television programmes concerned with black Britain in the 1970s. I then present three case studies. These are chosen for their variety of genre and form, for the valuable insights they offer into production and reception histories, and because they demonstrate the usefulness of the imaginative interpretation of archival and interview material in reappraising film and television texts in their historical contexts. In Part 3, I then draw on this methodological approach in order to ‘map’ the creative journey of the poet and playwright Jamal Ali, who worked in radical black theatre, film and television in the 1970s. Ali’s story provides an exemplar for the exploration of black creative agency in this period. Furthermore, the Brixton of Ali’s life and work is explored both as a site of socio-political struggle and as a liminal space in which diasporic community and black identity are imaginatively located.

<p> Since its inception, the piano recital has remained the principal&mdash;if not exclusive&mdash;model for presenting solo piano repertoire. It is a format that, as this essay will examine, has evolved throughout its history in response to artistic, social, and technological changes. Therefore, to advocate for modifications in the piano recital is simply to continue the rich tradition of a format that has not been rigid, but responsive to its environment. One way to suggest an alternative is by rethinking the recital in an audiovisual way. Correspondences between acoustical and visual elements abound, both in theory and materialized in instruments to &ldquo;perform&rdquo; colors. Furthermore, the development of abstract animation allowed fundamental aspects of music to be effectively visualized: time, gesture, and form, to name a few. The moving image solidified the relationship between both modes and began our current multimedia era. Many genres of music have demonstrated the value of a visual component as a complement to a performance, something which has been increasingly capturing the attention of classical musicians. By analyzing the aesthetic implications of a multimedia recital and evaluating projects that explore the addition of a visual element, we can suggest an alternative format that preserves the traditional piano repertoire and re-contextualizes it in a way that might better resonate with modern audiences. </p>

<p> This thesis argues the importance of mining the student's faith and strengthening the student&rsquo;s creative individuality or uniqueness in actor training. I will argue that allying the pedagogy of past master teachers Konstantin Stanislavsky and Yevgeny Vakhtangov with the development of &ldquo;faith&rdquo;, in the secular understanding of the word set forth in this paper, will aid actors in implementing a strong technique. The first chapter of this thesis focuses on the broad concepts of faith, both religious and secular, in order to establish the necessary vocabulary for my argument. The second chapter presents the theories of Konstantin Stanislavsky and Yevgeny Vakhtangov, in particular the examination of justification, crossing the threshold, and creative individuality, to advocate for faith as a powerful tool in actor training. The third chapter demonstrates how three projects completed as part of my graduate actor training at California State University Long Beach, which facilitated actor development and created opportunity for the students, reinforced my conviction that teaching faith in action and creative individuality is both useful in the training of young actors&mdash;and urgent. The conclusion of this paper argues for the design of practical curriculum that deals with acting as a spiritual vocation in theatre departments throughout the United States. </p>

<p> What does the current focus on identity as a medium of social exchange bring into the practice of improvised music? What happens to listening, spontaneity, empathy, freedom and generosity in this social climate? Is there somehow emerging within the music-improvisatory discourse a kind of de facto constraint, perhaps superimposed on the musical language from the larger cultural field? The frameworks of music sociology, object relations theory, political philosophy, pedagogy, music history and art criticism offer a backdrop against which the complex challenges of interpersonal communication can be seen in their relevance to the here and now of music improvisation.</p>

<p> This thesis explores the ways in which the fields of neurobiology and cognitive science impact concepts of performer processes, and how the findings of this research can help actors and actor trainers to examine assumptions that inform how they frame and describe performer practices. Cognitive science research provides a precise understanding of the embodied processes of &ldquo;self&rdquo;, &ldquo;consciousness&rdquo;, &ldquo;emotion&rdquo; and &ldquo;perceiving&rdquo;, and I argue that it is productive to interrogate these terms as they pertain to descriptions of the actor&rsquo;s practice and performer training. </p><p> In this thesis I describe the relevance of cognitive science findings to theatre with respect to concepts commonly advanced in actor training in the United States, namely the &ldquo;self,&rdquo; &ldquo;truth,&rdquo; and &ldquo;authentic.&rdquo; I offer a reconsideration of these concepts through a cognitive science lens that opens up possibilities for emerging dramatic and performance paradigms. I then propose the development of a &ldquo;corporeal intelligence,&rdquo; that enables an actor to propose gestures, movement, vocal strategies, and action</p>

A dissertation in fulfilment of the Degree of Masters of Arts in Fine Arts (MAFA) at the University of Witwatersrand 2014 / Catherine Wood describes our society today as an entanglement between languages, time, space, intimacy, drama and diversity (Wood 2012: 10). Ian Chambers affirms that the notion of communicating or recounting with greater multi-­‐dimensionality, enacting or displaying more than one perspective at the same time, seems to better facilitate the complexity involved in communication itself (Chambers 2000: 25). Interaction in today’s context is therefore a complex experience that can position many modes of engagement in the same moment. The following dissertation explores the process of translating more than one visual language – here, painting and performance. It explores how the interdisciplinary nature of visual languages can interpret experience as multifaceted, lending greater perspective to concepts, issues and subject matter. Walter Benjamin suggests that this is only possible because languages “are not strangers to one another, but are, a priori and apart from all historical relationships, interrelated in what they want to express” (Benjamin 1969: 72). Benjamin’s text introduces the idea of translation between languages as a mode, a natural way of interaction. I will use his concept of translation to explain my interest in the conflation between painting and performance, and how this process reflects on a particular experience our current context.

This treatise focuses on the evolution of percussion writing in the wind ensemble works of Karel Husa. Despite the prevailing method of composing for percussion in wind ensemble works being relegated to support roles, Husa treated percussion as a true unique section and tailored his compositions to their strengths. Through his masterworks for wind ensemble, Karel Husa helped expand the percussionist’s role from merely support for other sections of the ensemble to a section that presents primary motivic material representing a range of ideas and programmatic content including the invasion of Prague in the 1960’s to the condemnation of the treatment of our planet in the 1970’s. This treatise presents an introduction to the topic, a biographical overview of Karel Husa’s life, and finally an examination of Husa’s percussion writing in five of his works for wind ensemble. Score examples are used to demonstrate rhythmic and melodic motives, timbral support for wind instruments, and rhythmic demarcation of new sections. / A Treatise submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Music. / Summer Semester 2017. / July 14, 2017. / Band, Karel Husa, Music, Percussion, Wind Ensemble / Includes bibliographical references. / John W. Parks, IV, Professor Directing Treatise; Richard Clary, University Representative; Leon Anderson, Committee Member; Patrick Dunnigan, Committee Member.